Man. sees average to high pea yields

Aug 28, 2020

Pea harvest is over 70 per cent complete in the province

Staff Writer

Farms.com

Manitoba farmers are nearing the finish line for pea harvest and, overall, they’re seeing good results across the province.

Dennis Lange, the provincial pulse specialist with Manitoba Agriculture and Resource Development, is happy with the overall yields this year.

“I'm hearing lots of 50- and 60-bushel yields. In some regions up in the Swan River area, I'm even hearing some 70-bushel to 80-bushel yields,” he told Farms.com.

Farmers are 70 per cent complete pea harvest, the Aug. 25 crop report said. After the last week of good weather, however, Lange predicted Manitoba producers are closer to 80 per cent done. This figure is a little lower than the three-year average of about 94 per cent, he said.

“Things are moving along nicely, a little later than what we'd like to see, but it is what it is it with a later start in spring,” said Lange.

Manitoba received a lot of rainfall this year and these conditions affected yields in some areas.

“Peas tend to like drier conditions and make good use of the water they do have. … We're probably not going to average as high as what we did last year. In 2019, we saw some pretty phenomenal yields across the province. Overall, however, we're still going to have some very strong provincial yields,” he said.

Manitoba growers will cultivate more acres of peas in 2021 because of the good yields and prices, Lange predicted.

“We're sitting at just over 160,000 acres this year. Going into next year, my early projections are somewhere in that 180,000- to 200,000-acre range,” he said.

nathan4847/iStock/Getty Images Plus photo

Video: Moving Ag Research Forward Through Collaboration

BY: Ashley Robinson

It may seem that public and private researchers have different goals when it comes to agricultural research. However, their different strategies can work in tandem to drive agricultural research forward. Public research may focus more on high-risk and applied research with federal or outside funding, while private sector researchers focus more on research application.

“For me, the sweet spot for public private sector research is when we identify problems and collaborate and can use that diverse perspective to address the different aspects of the challenge. Public sector researchers can work on basic science high risk solutions as tools and technologies are developed. They then can work with their private sector partners who prototype solutions,” Mitch Tuinstra, professor of plant breeding and genetics in Purdue University’s Department of Agronomy, said during the Jan. 10 episode of Seed Speaks.

Public researchers they have the flexibility to be more curiosity driven in their work and do discovery research. This is complimentary to private research, which focuses on delivering a product, explained Jed Christianson, canola product design lead for Bayer CropScience, explained during the episode.

“As a seed developer, we worry about things like new crop diseases emerging. Having strong public sector research where people can look into how a disease lifecycle cycle works, how widespread is it and what damage it causes really helps inform our product development strategies,” he added.

It’s not always easy though to develop these partnerships. For Christianson, it’s simple to call up a colleague at Bayer and start working on a research project. Working with someone outside of his company requires approvals from more people and potential contracts.

“Partnerships take time, and you always need to be careful when you're establishing those contracts. For discoveries made within the agreement, there need to be clear mechanisms for sharing credits and guidelines for anything brought into the research to be used in ways that both parties are comfortable with,” Christianson said.

Kamil Witek, group leader of 2Blades, a non-profit that works with public and private ag researchers, pointed out there can be limitations and challenges to these partnerships. While private researchers are driven by being able to make profits and stay ahead of competitors, public researchers may be focused on information sharing and making it accessible to all.

“The way we deal with this, we work in this unique dual market model. Where on one hand we work with business collaborators, with companies to deliver value to perform projects for them. And at the same time, we return the rights to our discoveries to the IP to use for the public good in developing countries,” Witek said during the episode.

At the end of the day, the focus for all researchers is to drive agricultural research forward through combining the knowledge, skills and specializations of the whole innovation chain, Witek added.

“If there's a win in it for me, and there's a win in it for my private sector colleagues in my case, because I'm on the public side, it’s very likely to succeed, because there's something in it for all of us and everyone's motivated to move forward,” Tuinstra said.